I want to share some wins that my children have made in the Poultry Show circuit with their bantam Dominiques purchased from Cackle Hatchery® in 2025.
Cuteness Factor
At the 2025 Missouri State Fair, our 5-year-old son Everett showed his cockerel Dinosaur. It was his first ever Youth Exhibition Poultry Association Showmanship event. He didn’t rank very high as he was a PeeWee showing in with the older Junior class. But they made the cover page of the Sedalia newspaper for their cuteness!
Dinosaur did receive a 1st place Premium ribbon in the Open Show at this year’s Missouri State Fair!
Champion Trio
Our 16-year-old daughter Madisyn “Madzy” Suess took 8 Bantams (6 from the 2025 Cackle Hatchery hatch) to the 2025 Missouri State Poultry Association’s Fall Show under our Rocky Oak Homestead name. The MSPA reported receiving a record-breaking 1,487 entries for this show!
It was a double card Open and Triple Youth event. So Madzy was able to showcase a full Display of bantam Dominiques there.
In the 1st open show, Madzy’s Best of Breed and Best of Variety winner was a cockerel named Steve’s Lava Chicken. She also took 1st place Young Trio and brought home a 2nd place Trio as well.
In the 2nd show, Steve — the cockerel from her 1st place Trio — took Reserve of Breed and Reserve of Variety. Again, Madzy also had both the 1st and 2nd place Trios.
In the blue card Youth show, Steve’s Lava Chicken continued to be on fire! He once again won Best of Breed and Variety. One of her pullets from Cackle took Reserve of Breed and Variety.
She also had the 1st place Young Trio in this show. That trio ended up going on to become Best Bantam Trio, and then the overall Champion Trio of the show! This is a huge win for us and also quite a brag for Cackle Hatchery.
Costume Contest
Also at the MSPA Fall 2025 Show, our 8-year-old Jasper used his Cackle pullet Pixie for YEPA junior Showmanship. He didn’t win with that judge.
But he did take 1st place on the written breed ID test and scored Pixie and friends a bougie bag of treats. They participated in the costume contest as well, dressed in Hogworts’ finest.
Awesom Bantam Dominique Stock
Of course these beautiful birds are not perfect. But we’ve picked through and certainly found enough good Dominiques to get our young showmen started. We know this is in part due to the late Mark Fields helping to set Cackle up with solid foundation stock years ago.
We greatly appreciate the work Mr. Fields did for the Dominique community. And we’re grateful to Cackle Hatchery for continuing to breed forward good Dominique bantam stock for us to work with.
And that’s today’s news from the Cackle Coop.
Julia Suess of Missouri is the Cole County Youth Showcase Poultry Superintendent and a 4-H Poultry Project Leader.
